


A Strange Mirror

by kathkin



Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Emotionally Constipated Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Infertility, M/M, Pre-Relationship, Sharing a Bed, because they share a bed so often it has ceased to be a source of conflict, this isn't a 'there was only one bed' fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-13
Updated: 2020-07-13
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:01:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25244317
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kathkin/pseuds/kathkin
Summary: “I suppose it wouldn’t do to be leaving little witchers around the place, would it.”“Witchers are sterile.”“Hm?” Jaskier glanced up from his notes, doing a startled double-take. “What, all of you?”Jaskier learns something new about witchers.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Comments: 101
Kudos: 1339





	A Strange Mirror

The air in the room was thick with the smell of rain from their damp clothes drying by the fire. Their hosts’ voices carried from downstairs, muffled by the walls and the sound of the beating rain. Jaskier sat upon the bed, already changed into dry shirt and breeches and humming to himself as he scratched away in his notebook.

The farmer and his wife had given them a bed for the night and invited them to supper. Geralt didn’t used to get invited to supper. The last few months it had been happening more and more.

“Don’t suppose you could kill something more interesting next time.” Pausing in his scratching, Jaskier glanced up at him and added, “no offence.”

“Interesting?” said Geralt.

“You know,” said Jaskier. “Something a bit sexier than drowners, so I can make a song out of it.” He went back to his notes.

Geralt paused in the act of unlacing his damp shirt. “What kind of monsters do you think are sexy?”

Jaskier drew a line under a significant word in his notes. “Wyverns are pretty sexy.”

“They are?”

“Basilisks,” said Jaskier, gesturing with his quill. “ _Very_ sexy.”

Geralt looked at the darkened window. “The fuck are you talking about?”

“Just offering some constructive criticism.” Jaskier took in Geralt’s face and said, “alright. Point taken.” He went back to scribbling, his tongue poking out the corner of his mouth. “The daughter was making eyes at you.”

“I noticed.”

“She’s pretty.”

Geralt grunted. He’d noticed that too, but he wasn’t about to encourage him.

“Not your type?”

The window rattled in the window. Geralt threw his shirt over the rack by the fire and turning away began to unlace his breeches. Behind him Jaskier’s pen scratched away.

“You must get a lot of that,” he said. “With your whole – thing.”

“A lot of what?” He stepped into his dry breeches.

“You know.” Jaskier drew a meaningful circle in the air with his quill. “Beautiful women making eyes at you. Throwing themselves at you. Terribly grateful to you for –”

“I don’t,” said Geralt, “do that.”

“Right.” Jaskier cleared his throat. He went on writing.

Geralt shrugged on a dry shirt, and laced it. “I’m careful about who I bed,” he said. “Have to be.”

“I see,” said Jaskier. “I suppose it wouldn’t do to be leaving little witchers around the place, would it.”

For a foolish moment Geralt couldn’t grasp what he meant. Then it struck him, and he didn’t know what to say to it. People’s knowledge of his kind was – patchy, and unreliable. It was hard to predict what a person might know, or not know. He had assumed Jaskier knew this. Jaskier did not know this.

He said, “witchers are sterile.”

“Hm?” Jaskier glanced up from his notes, doing a startled double-take. “What, all of you?”

“It’s by design.” He reached for his boots.

“Oh,” said Jaskier. “Oh – I see.” He fidgeted with his quill. His posture, which had been so idle, one leg crossed over the other, one foot drawing lazy circles in the air, was suddenly tense. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t know.”

Lacing his boots, Geralt didn’t reply.

“I’ll not bring it up again.”

In truth, he didn’t care if Jaskier brought it up again, or didn’t. There were few subjects in the world that had the power to hurt him and this wasn’t one of them.

He said, “hm.”

*

The kitchen was too full of people, too warm and too humid. The family was large enough without two extra bodies crammed in. They were too poor to pay him for clearing their well, so they did their best to make up the debt by filling his belly.

He wasn’t about to complain. He was grateful for Jaskier’s presence, for his keeping the conversation going while he ate. The farmer’s wife and her oldest daughter doted on Jaskier, the whole family hanging off every word of his stories. It was easy for them all to forget who the guest of honour actually was.

When the meal was over and the plates had been cleared, the youngest of the children scrambled into Geralt’s lap, babbling at him cheerfully, eager to tell him all about the farm, to tug on the ends of his hair. The farmer and his wife shot each other nervous looks. They said nothing.

He excused himself early.

Though it was barely nightfall Jaskier came up to bed not long after him, stumbling a little on the stairs and cursing to himself, fumbling with the latch.

“Oh,” he said as he stepped over the threshold, stretching out his arms in an exaggerated yawn. “Oh, it’s been a _long_ day.”

“Hm,” Geralt agreed.

Jaskier was a little tipsy from dinner. His cheeks were pink and he smelled faintly of wood smoke. Stripped down to his shirt, he climbed into bed. He lay alongside Geralt, propped up on one elbow, regarding him intently and clearly not meaning to sleep any time soon.

“Go on, then,” said Geralt to the ceiling.

“Hm?” Jaskier’s eyes were big and innocent.

“You’ve been chomping at the bit all evening.”

“I haven’t.”

“I’d rather you ask than lie there all night making faces at me.”

“I’m not making faces,” said Jaskier, though he was. “And I don’t want to pry.”

“Just,” said Geralt, “ask.”

Jaskier shifted uncomfortably on the bed. “When you say it’s _by design_ ,” he said. “What do they do, exactly?” Before Geralt could answer he went on, “I mean, do they – do something to you?”

“Depends what you mean.” He’d lost track of what Jaskier was driving at. _Do they do something to you_. Of course they did _something_.

“Well, do they –” Jaskier broke off with a sigh. “Is it a.” He motioned in a way that meant nothing at all. At Geralt’s blank look, his eyes flicked anxiously to his crotch, and it hit him what he was trying to ask. “Do you – have everything you’re –”

“I’ve got all my parts.”

“Oh thank the _gods_ ,” Jaskier said in a rush. Geralt snorted. “Don’t you laugh! It’s been worrying me all evening.” He smacked Geralt’s chest by way of chastising him. His hand lingered there, resting on his sternum.

“And it all,” he said after a moment, “works as normal?”

Geralt grunted.

“Is that a yes?”

“Yeah.”

“Well.” Jaskier patted his chest. “That’s splendid.”

“I don’t see why you care,” said Geralt.

“Why wouldn’t I care?”

“They’re not your parts.”

“I suppose I just don’t like the idea of a man having his parts tampered with,” said Jaskier. “Is that so wrong?”

“No. I suppose not.” Jaskier was still looking at him, his gaze no less intent for having got an answer to his burning question. He wasn’t used to people looking at him the way Jaskier looked at him. Sometimes the way Jaskier looked at him made him feel stripped bare.

He didn’t hate it.

“So, um,” said Jaskier. “What is it they do, exactly?”

“It’s a by-product of the mutagens.”

“I see,” Jaskier said. “But an – intentional one?”

Geralt grunted an affirmation.

“Now, if you want to stop talking about this, do say so.” Jaskier sat up a little more. “But – I don’t see why.”

“Isn’t it obvious?”

“Not – not really. No.”

“Witchers are mutants,” said Geralt. “Any children we had would be mutated. It wouldn’t be pretty.”

“Well, when you put it like that it does sound reasonable.” Jaskier sighed to himself. “But it doesn’t seem fair.”

“How so?”

“People ought to have a choice in these matters,” said Jaskier. “Oughtn’t they?”

“No-one chooses to be a witcher.”

“No,” said Jaskier. “I suppose not.” He clucked his tongue. “Just seems like a pity.”

“Hm?”

“I just can’t help thinking you’d be a good father.”

Geralt turned to look at him, incredulous. “What?” Jaskier shrugged, as if to say, _isn’t it obvious?_ “No. I wouldn’t.”

“I think you would,” said Jaskier.

He wondered, not for the first time, what it was Jaskier saw when he looked at him. He didn’t think Jaskier saw the hero he put in his songs – he was sure Jaskier knew that much of what he wrote was bullshit. But he didn’t think Jaskier saw the truth either. He saw something between fantasy and reality. Jaskier’s eyes were a strange mirror to look into.

“You can’t have a child on the path.”

“Well – leaving the witcher thing aside for a moment –”

“You can’t leave it aside,” Geralt snapped, in spite of himself starting to grow heated.

“Say you could,” said Jaskier, unfazed.

“No-one would want a witcher for a father.”

“Why not?” 

_You know why_ , he wanted to say. But Jaskier was pretending not to know. “Witchers are monsters.”

“Oh – yes,” said Jaskier, drawing his brows into a stern mock frown. “You are a _truly_ terrifying monster.”

“Jaskier –”

“I quake in my boots at the sight of your hideous countenance, for you are such a fearful beast and I am so very afraid –”

“Maybe you should be.”

Jaskier cocked his head. “Why?”

 _So very many reasons_ , he thought. “I could tear you apart if I wanted.”

“Ah, but you haven’t.” Jaskier patted his chest warmly, as if he’d made a conclusive argument. “You’re in a mood,” he pronounced. 

“I’m not.”

“Yes, you are,” said Jaskier. “A gloomy one.”

“I’m always gloomy.”

“Untrue,” said Jaskier. “You’re often gloomy but sometimes grim and I’ve known you to be grumpy.”

Geralt grunted at the ceiling.

“Anyway,” said Jaskier, “children aren’t afraid of you. That little one tonight loved you.”

Geralt thought of the way the farmer and his wife had looked at each other when the child had crawled into his lap. “Children aren’t old enough to know better.”

“Or, alternatively, one might say that they’re too young to have been taught to be afraid,” said Jaskier.

“It makes no difference.”

“It makes all the difference.” Jaskier’s hand shifted, sliding up his chest to his shoulder. He took a lock of Geralt’s hair and began idly to twist it around his fingers. “Anyway. I feel safe with you.”

“Do you?”

“Completely safe,” said Jaskier. “What else could you want out of a father?”

“A lot of things.” Geralt looked at Jaskier, bewildered. “Are you trying to say you think of me as a father?”

“What?” said Jaskier. “No. What – _no_.” Dropping Geralt’s hair as if it was hot he sat up. “Absolutely not. No. Don’t _say_ things like that.”

“Why not?” It seemed a reasonable enough question to him. He’d never got the impression Jaskier thought of him that way – didn’t like the idea of Jaskier thinking of him that way – but he couldn’t imagine what else he might be driving at.

“It – upsets me,” said Jaskier. “It just does. And this conversation has got _wildly_ off track.”

“Was it ever on track?”

“Briefly.” Jaskier lay back down. “Anyway, please don’t ever suggest that you’re like a father to me again.”

“I wasn’t,” said Geralt. “I thought _you_ were suggesting it.”

“ _Why_ would I do that?”

“I don’t know,” said Geralt. “I was confused too. What were you trying to say, if not that?”

“It doesn’t matter,” said Jaskier vaguely. “Look. All I’m trying to say is how sorry I am that that was done to you. It’s not fair.”

The thing of it was, Jaskier wasn’t the first person he’d had to explain this fact of his biology to. He’d had to explain it now and then, mainly in whorehouses, and the reaction, even when not explaining it to women anxious that they might end up carrying a mutant child, had been one of relief or understanding. He’d never had someone express their condolences at the loss before.

He said, “hm.”

Sighing, Jaskier shuffled in closer to him. He draped an arm over his chest. “I wish things were different.”

“If things were different you’d never have met me.”

“True.” Jaskier yawned, a genuine yawn this time. Long minutes passed, and were it not for his breathing Geralt might have thought he had fallen asleep. In the grate the fire was burning down low.

At length, Jaskier said, “what they did to you. Did it hurt?”

Geralt breathed out. “No,” he lied.


End file.
